Lebanon’s NOW media outlet on Friday published a series of interviews and updates from the besieged Lebanese town of Tfail, which has been targeted by what NOW described as a “campaign of aerial bombardment against… civilians” by Hezbollah-backed forces loyal to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime:
“For the past two nights, Syrian warplanes have been throwing barrel bombs on the Ain al-Jawzeh farm in Tfeil, where over 2000 Syrian refugees have sought shelter” Mohamad, a resident of the town told NOW, “As a result two Lebanese civilians, a female and a male, Mohamad Ali Haidar and Fatima Ahmad Hamoud were killed in the process.”
Tfeil, a Lebanese village with a population of almost 4,000 Lebanese citizens and 10,000 Syrian refugees had been under siege for over four months by Hezbollah forces and Syrian Army Forces, without supplies of food, electricity, shelter, or aid.
The attacks have recently escalated to include barrel bombs, air-deployed shrapnel-packed IEDs that can level entire buildings with a single detonation. Tfail is technically in Lebanese territory but is accessible only via roads that run through Syria, and regime forces months ago set up roadblocks and began to choke off the town in an effort to prevent the transit of opposition elements across the Syria-Lebanon border.
News of the attacks had been trickling out of Tfail for weeks, with reports emerging in late April that the Syrian army had launched a series of artillery strikes that had sent thousands of civilians – both Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees – scrambling to seek shelter in the surrounding hills. Beirut subsequently managed to send a relief caravan to the town.
Friday’s report by NOW indicated that attacks have resumed, and one resident was quoted by the news outlet accusing Beirut of having only come “one day and then left us all alone to deal with the Syrian regime attacks.”
NOW also confirmed that Syrian forces targeted the center of Tfail with sustained tank fire for at least three hours, in addition to the air strikes.
The Syrian campaign has come alongside several other cross-border attacks. The dynamic, under which Hezbollah-backed forces have been shelling Lebanese civilians and territory, has been devastating to the Iran-backed terror group’s long insistence that it is an indigenous Lebanese organization protecting Lebanese sovereignty from outside interference.
It is not clear, however, that the collapse of Hezbollah’s decades-long pretense – which had occassionally been echoed in corners of the Western foreign policy community – will materially affect its ability to dominate Lebanon militarily and therefore politically. The group has publicly declared, for instance, that it will not accept a president who is not an ally of Hezbollah:
“The next president must be a friend of the resistance, reflect the aspirations of the Lebanese, and commit to the ministerial statement of the current government and its political content,” MP Ali Fayyad said during a ceremony in Blida, south Lebanon, according to the Daily Star.
“Those who opposed the ministerial statement have no place in the presidency,” he said, referring to Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, who also opposed taking part in a government with Hezbollah.
An effort by the Lebanese parliament to pick a new president this week failed.
[Photo: euronews / Flickr]